A/N: So glad you guys liked the last chapter! I promise I'm going to try and update more regularly, especially since finals are coming up and then winter break, which means I'll have a month to update and write, hopefully.

Also: I got the fifth and final season of Leverage on DVD, so I'll finally be able to see the whole series! Can't wait!

Please continue to review. I love you guys so much for the comments that you leave and I appreciate the feedback.

Enjoy!

"Eliot, I really don't see the point in all of this."

"Nate, really? That's bullshit and even you know it."

Sophie, Hardison, and Parker hovered curiously behind the closed door of Nate's office. He and Eliot were having what sounded like a serious discussion, but that had hardly stopped the three other thieves from eavesdropping anyways. And it's not like it was that hard - both Nate and Eliot had gone from calmly quiet to almost shouting in the last few minutes, as was normal with the two stubborn dominant personalities, though it still wasn't clear as to what this argument was about.

"Eliot, I appreciate your concern, but there's really no need to have so many. And besides, we're well established here and -"

"And what? Might I remind you, we were well established with our first headquarters too, and that literally blew up in our faces thanks to Blackpool and Sterling. Who's to say something like that won't come up again? We've already had the place shot through by that sniper when we went after Moreau. I'm telling you, Nate. It's a good idea. I can eve offer up one or two of mine."

"I'm sure that won't be necessary, Eliot, and that's the end of that. I mean, even for argument's sake, if I did agree with you, doing it all right now is-is foolish and - and pointless. Hardison can easily get us all we need if it comes to it -"

"No offense to you or Mr. "Age of the Geek", " Eliot interrupted, "But neither of you have been on this side of things before and you'd be clueless setting it up. That's why you have me."

"What side of things?" Nate asked shortly.

"The Dameon Moreau side of things, Nate!" Eliot roared. "The side of things that means kill or be killed. My side of things!"

"What do you think they're talking about?" Sophie whispered to the thief and hacker beside her, both eagerly pressing their ears to the door. It wasn't often that any of them were kept out of the loop, so it made this private "behind doors" conversation all that more enticing and infuriating.

'Why don't we just ask them?" Parker said simply. She stood suddenly and before either Sophie or Hardison could grab her, she had grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door to Nate's office wide open, walking calmly in as if it was hers. Guiltily, Sophie and Hardison followed. Nate and Eliot were standing on opposite sides of the room, with impassive, though Eliot was still seething with barely repressed annoyance and no small amount of anger. His arms were crossed on his chest, and his head hung low, his hair hanging like a curtain in front of his face. Nate, for his part, looked resigned, and Parker was lounging easily in the chair behind his desk.

"Yes?" Nate sighed impatiently.

"What's going on Nate?" Sophie looked at her lover worriedly. "Eliot?"

"Come on, guys. We heard you two hashing something out." Hardison said.

"We weren't "hashing" anything." Nate tried to smile, to play it all off like he always did, but Sophie knew none of them were going to buy it. "It was just a -a simple discussion between friends."

"You were yelling." Parker said softly, not looking at any of them, but instead choosing to fiddle with something in her hands. "I don't like yelling."

"We weren't-"

"I'm sorry about that, darling." Eliot sighed, finally looking up. "Really, I - I didn't want it to go that far but he," he pointed an accusing finger at Nate, "just won't listen to common sense."

"Now, see, you're not being fair here, Eliot." Nate started but Eliot wasn't having it.

"Fair?" Eliot gave a sharp laugh. "Since when have you ever cared about what was fair? I don't remember thinking that your stint in prison was fair, or honestly, letting Sterling off the hook for everything he's done."

"Who, whoa, whoa." Hardison held his hands up placatingly. "Can someone please explain what the hell y'all are even going on about?"

Neither Eliot or Nate spoke for a few minutes. Sophie watched them, watched that stupid mini macho showdown that they were having with their eyes, their body language, their stubborn refusal to relent and let them into their conversation. Maybe they knew that the three of them could change the tide of the decision, in either direction. Finally, after an eternity it seemed, Eliot was the one to relent. He gave another sigh, blowing his dark hair from his eyes and glanced at Parker, who was still fiddling with something small.

"Safe houses."

"Excuse me?" Hardison blinked, leaning in. "What was that? Did-did you just say safe houses? That was it? Are you serious? Are you - goddammit we thought it was something serious and y'all are in here screaming about some stupid safe houses?"

"Hey, it is serious." Eliot snapped, uncrossing his arms and standing at attention.

"I don't doubt that." Sophie said calmly, walking further into the room. She went to stand beside Nate, though made it evident that it was more for a visual effect rather than her prematurely taking sides in the war. She leaned casually against the desk, her dark eyes addressing the hitter curiously. "Perhaps you could enlighten us on why you two were so….verbal on the issue of safe houses?"

"Look, okay, there's no issue here." Nate clapped his hands together, still trying to play it off as casually as he could. Always the con man.

"Wait, I'm confused." Parker looked up from her hands. "Does Nate not believe in safe houses? That's silly. Everyone has one."

"Well, maybe not everyone, babe." Hardison cut in. "But Nate…I mean, we all have a place we can hide out in emergencies. I got a place, Parker's got a place, Sophie, Eliot -"

"I don't have a "place"." Eliot snapped. "Okay, it's not some box apartment over a Chinese restaurant. It's not a man-cave or - or some back room in an abandoned arcade. I have safe houses, emphasis on the plural."

"So you have a few hideaways -" Sophie started but was interrupted yet again.

"One hundred and fifty six." Eliot said directly. Four pairs of eyes stared at him in shock. "What? What do you think I do with my take of our jobs? And how about that first big take, right when we started, that multi-million hit?"

"But….one hundred and fifty six different places?" Parker gaped. "Why do you need so many houses? I thought most people only had one."

"Parker, they're not like actually houses you live in all year round." Eliot started but a thought had occurred to Sophie and she cut him off with a regal wave of her hand.

"Eliot, what did you mean when you said that neither Nate nor Hardison would know how to "set one up?" That they, or rather, we had never been on "your side of things" before?"

Again, there was a few minutes of silence. Sophie had to reflect that this wasn't their weirdest conversation by far, nor their most intense, but it still felt…..hard. It had an intensity to it that wasn't strange, but it was new. Sophie looked at Eliot a little more closely, saw the carefully hidden bags under his eyes, the stress and the strain that he was doing everything to hide from them. He was holding himself carefully, and Sophie remembered that on their last job he had cracked a few ribs pushing Nate out of the way from a golf cart. Eliot had gotten clipped, but he had brushed it off as if it was nothing. She blinked, bringing herself back to the present.

"I've been at this job for a long time." Eliot said softly. "What I do….it's led me to make some hard choices. You saw the kind of work Dameon Moreau and his men are into. I used to work for him, did things that I'm not proud of, things that still haunt me, still give me nightmares. It's a dark side to this business, a side we've kept ourselves out of for so long. But it's kill or be killed when it comes down to it, and I haven't been killed yet. But that life…I left it when I joined up with you. This team. Nate isn't Moreau and I'm not…I'm not the same man I once was. That's not say I'm still not dangerous, that I'm not hunted, that I don't have a thousand enemies out there who'd like to gut me like a pig."

"Eliot." Sophie said sharply, but still with a hint of gentleness. She knew how hard it was for him to open up, but he was going off on a tangent. "The point?"

"My point, Sophie," Eliot said, "is that I am not, and will never be, safe. Wherever I go, whoever I work with, whatever con or heist I pull, I leave a mark that can be easily traced. So I have a safe house in every state, in countries strategically placed all around the world. And when I say a safe house, I don't mean a vacation home in Tokyo with butlers and a penthouse view, or an abandoned acrobatics studio, or a little townhouse in West Virginia, or an apartment over a high rolling gaming company."

"Well. Beggars can't be choosers." Hardison snarked.

"My houses are average, two story builds." Eliot said, pointing at them for emphasis. "Each one is equipped with state of the art security, plus some of my own precautions. I have only one staff member who checks in on the house regularly, and who I contact to stock it with food and necessities when I'm in the area just in case. Everything is state of the art, from appliances to vehicles. Everything. There's four master bedrooms, an industrial bathroom, a fully stocked medical supply and even an on call nurse in every area."

"Isn't that a little overboard?" Hardison asked. Eliot glared at him, and there was even some resignation mixed with it.

"This is what I meant, Nate. None of you can ever understand because you've never lived in the world I've lived in. No, Alec, it's not overboard. It's barely enough to keep me stable. These houses are necessary if a job goes bad in the best case, or in the worst, which means I only just made it out of there alive. Too many solo jobs have gone down where I can only just stand without my knees buckling, where the blood loss isn't critical yet, where my head wasn't completely bashed in. Those safe houses are there for a reason when I got to recuperate, when I got to hide."

"So you asked Nate if we could set one up for the team?" Sophie asked.

"No." Eliot breathed. "I told him that everyone needs to set up their own. That the team should have one in every state, and everyone should do the same for themselves, like I did. And as I said, I can put one or two of mine up for the team, but -"

"You want to make sure we're safe." Parker said. It was the first thing she had said in a while, during the last half hour of the conversation. She was looking directly at Eliot, her eyes wide and unblinking, but intelligent. Eliot took in a breath and nearly choked.

"It's my job." If Sophie didn't know any better, she would have thought he was sobbing. "But I'm not always going to be here. And if I'm not here, if this place can't be safe and I cannot keep you safe, then you need somewhere to go, somewhere only you know and that's perfect for you. A safe house."

"Eliot, what's this about?" Nate stepped forward, suddenly very concerned for the younger man. He had been prepared for the anger, the brashness and the military precision type orders. But this kind of broken emotion wasn't normal for the hitter - it meant something was very, very wrong. Indeed, when Eliot looked at him, his blue eyes were cracked with repressed feeling and he was shaking slightly.

"An old contact got in touch with me." he whispered. "It might be nothing. But there might come a time when I have to take care of some business. I don't know if….I need to know that if something happens when I'm on my own, or in a job, and I'm gone, that you guys have what you need. And that means that in every state, you have a place to set up shop."

Nate stared at Eliot for a moment. He was hiding something important, that much was true. Whatever it was, it had this man rattled. Nate knew better than to push it too far right now, and he knew that sooner or later, whatever it was would come to light. Hopefully before it was too late.

"Okay. I'll put some thought into it." Nate nodded.

"Me too, man." Hardison said.

"I can spare a few million." Sophie smiled.

"I think I can live with parting with my money….for you." Parker said, and stood from her desk. She held up what she had been playing with. It was a necklace - a locket, actually, in the shape of an oval. She reached behind her and hooked the clasp, letting the locket rest right in the hollow of her throat. Eliot watched her with bright eyes, not saying a word. One by one, he made eye contact with each them, as if assessing what they were saying as he truth.

Finally he nodded once, then turned and walked from the office, leaving them all in silence.

TBC